R is for Really, Really Rare . . . Not!

Having inadvertently used TJF and Master Sprecher ('they started it') to push the blog over the five-million hits, back in August, or whenever, I thought it would be fun to use this series of five corrective posts to get us over the third-best-year finish-line!

There's this guy, we'll call him the Man with Three Names, for it is he, who keeps posting the same stuff on a Faceplant group, over and over again, I mean seven times since lockdown, for most of it!

One of the things he keeps posting, and he's just posted it again, is his 'rare' colours of Marksman ACW, courtesy of the late John 'Marx Man' Stengel. Making statements such as;

"Some of these colors were test shots and were never publicly released"

"When he was deciding which colors to run the molds in..."

". . . in about 7 different colors, including 3 or 4 test shot colors, that were never produced."

"Some of these are "test shot" colors, that John was considering producing."

"They were a reject for mass marketing."

But it's all bollocks! I don't know whether he's trying to impress all the other members of the group, or just all the North American members of the group, but it's all bollocks!

 

Let me explain . . . I now have 12 colours, these have all come in, in mixed lots, off of that intermahweb-thingy, where other colours remain to be found, by me, other people have already found them! Marksmen, back in the day were a small two-man outfit, Peter Coles (now of Replicants) who designed and mastered the figures, and got the moulds produced and Mike Ellis, the office-end, who dealt with Rado Industries (Ri-Toys) in Hong Kong (Marx reissues), Mr Stengel and other clients around the world, and ran the stand at toy soldier shows.

Each run of the tools, was what the 'garage firm' could afford, and while some colours were more official than others, they were all available at the shows, I remember them piled-up on Mike's table for years afterward, and they regularly appear on feeBay, from whence I got mine in two lots a year or two ago.

While the idea Peter would let his moulds go to the US, and trust them to come back, is rather risible! 

Now, one shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but there is a possibility the late Mr. Stengel Senior (whom our reprobate keeps spelling with an 'a', suggesting he didn't know him as well as he claims to have) might have embellished his own position in, or contribution to, the Marksmen story.

 

But this endless re-poster, of the tale at hand, also has a history of not paying for his advertising, trying to get people kicked-off Facebook Groups with such convoluted lies, he eventually manages to destroy his case, trying to prove the truth, by inadvertently showing the lie (a story for another day, maybe), and, was only today, admitting to pirating Helmet, which may or may not have had a role in one of their demises, so I tend to think he's probably bullshitting for effect? And he keeps referring to a 'Peter Ellis' in his posts on the subject, suggesting he knows the subject no better than he knew Mr. Stengel, with an 'e'!

It's the same in the small-scale, where there were 'officially' four colours, but actually six or seven are kicking around, due to each batch often being a different shade, even if it wasn't an officially 'new' colour.

And - as far as I know - Action Casting, the firm currently owned by John Stengel Junior, don't have and never has had, the Marksmen ACW moulds?

 

And that's it, finishing with five posts in a row, correcting some of the crap out there - it's the third-best year, ever, for posts, here at Small Scale World. Which, given some of the shit which has come my way in recent months, is a major achievement! Anything which posts between now and Monday night is a bonus, we won't get close to the other two year's totals!

H is for Hing Fat, Not 'DGN'

The forth corrective post today, except the calendar says it's tomorrow now, but I'm on an odd timeline at the moment, I'll schedule it for 9.30 in the morning!

 

You may have encountered the phrase 'DGN' in your Toy Soldier scrolling, over the run-up to Christmas, I don't know if it was aimed at me - He has shown a past preference for warming hostilities at Christmas, but hadn't for a year or two - or just a 'brain freeze', he's good at those, and he went on to link it to a sales page clearly crediting SCS Direct (sometimes Wicked Duals), not 'DGN'!

 

Now, I dealt with 'DGN' here, I wouldn't suggest you read all of it, it was tedious the first time round, but The Denouement will give you an idea of the conclusion, without reading the tedium of how I got there! But I thought I'd correct the new nonsense while I'm in a corrective mood!

 

 

If the comment was aimed at me, it might be these lots, all recently Blogged here at Small Scale World, which could have triggered the resurrection of the phrase 'DGN' after more than six-years? All the above are Hing Fat products, advertised on their poorly attended Faceplant page and offered for trade-sale on their difficult to navigate website, which has menus which only show themselves after you've clicked on one of the headings on the left.

 

Faceplant Page - https://www.facebook.com/hingfattoys

Older sculpts - https://www.facebook.com/hingfattoys/photos/pb.100063683895745.-2207520000/1725209017735366/?type=3

Newer sculpts - https://www.facebook.com/hingfattoys/photos/pb.100063683895745.-2207520000/1717159245207010/?type=3

 

Website - http://www.hingfat.com.hk/ 

Older sculpts - http://www.hingfat.com.hk/index.php?c=237

Newer sculpts - http://www.hingfat.com.hk/index.php?c=239

 

Basic research!

They are all based on the old Matchbox American Infantry set, with the smaller set in the lower image being those handled by such luminaries as D&D Distribution in the 'States.

While the other two samples are the newer set, from a larger line, distributed in Canada back in 2014 by Ricochet, as TJF told us himself in a post where the dreaded E. Sell said "These are the same DGN-not HING FAT figures run in different color", even though they are the same colour, and other people attending the post were happy to acknowledge the Hing Fat attribution and to them dating-back prior to 2014!

Peter Evans, roving reporter for Plastic Warrior magazine has been distributing them for several years now, and he gets them from Hing Fat direct, that's the Hing Fat who HAVE a website, who HAVE a Faceplant page, no matter how problematical they might be! And it seems SCS Direct are the latest to take some?

 

And yet, other Faceplant groups are full of 'DGN', several evilBay bottom-feeders (mostly Russians strangely?) are (or 'were', they're all banned until Putler looses the rest of his navy!) using 'DGN' in their listings.

 

But no one in the six years since my rebuttal, in the seven or eight years since Erwin's nonsense on the Vichy site, in the ten years since both types have been on the market alongside each-other, has provided a scintilla of evidence for a 'DGN' - no links to no factory, no website, no trade-ordering page or no Faceplant?

 

No address even, someone has suggested TJF said it meant 'Dounghan-Guandong Niunght', but that's nonsence, Dongguan (different spelling) is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong (different spelling) province, while 'Niunght' is a made-up word!

I have in recent months highlighted the fact that with the second version, where sculpting has been taken away from the Matchbox originals, there is some variation in base, probably nothing more significant than different cavities in a multiple-cavity mould (by giving them different bases, you might ID the problem cavity if a problem is noticed further down the 'bench'?), which are the two to the left, but that theory is rather blown-away by the fact that they are approximately 1-in-3, rounded to oblong bases?

The older figure is on the right, or 'older sculpt', Hing Fat are still offering both, to anyone who wants them! Base-marking is the same font or letter type, but slightly smaller on the older design, and all are made of the same plastic, a dense polyethylene or polypropylene type with that slipperiness to the finger-nail of nylon components?

Shade varies slightly between batches, and with the newer design, the two officers in the bottom shot have different sized oblong bases! If you read my original post on the Japanese from years ago (the post which seems to have started the war, even though it took them four years to strike!), it doesn't read quite right by what we now know, but that's - in part - because we're all learning, and we've learnt since then.

 

They were (the Japanese) in part - pose wise - inherited by Hing Fat from Rado Indistries/Ri Toys, and seem to be on their third iteration as Hing Fat with various changes in pose line-up and base-design? And with mine in storage, I haven't paid them the same attention, the three above came in with the Americans, and probably go with them. While an 'over the top' set accompanies the new oblong-based line.

 

All my versions of the newer set so far found, and they are all Hing Fat, not 'DGN'! And while I am only too-aware of the old adage 'the lady doth protest too much' in this case A) I haven't said anything for over six years and B) you have to nip this crap in the bud, or they will try to get away with more! Tiresome, and 'DGN' is 'Design', abbreviated.

B is for Blue Bird, not Bluebird, or is it Telsalda?

About two years ago I put a few people (Deadleaf and a couple of others) right on New Maries one of the Hong Kong plastic companies we've managed to ID thanks to Bill B's catalogue, and while they haven't done much with the information, you can imagine my surprise when I saw them being described as "...the father of Telsalda" earlier today, with absolutely no empirical evidence, nor a credit as to where they got New Maries!?

 

Especially as Telsalda are a jobber of the old type, jobbing product to third parties. By which I mean we who tend to call what the Americans tend to call a 'jobber' (or 'jogger' if you are one Mr. Sell!) an 'importer/wholesaler', but Telsalda would have been a jobber to the Brit's as well, jobbing stuff to buyers, at the toy fairs, down in Kowloon harbour, or out of offices in the Toy Building - 200 Fifth Avenue, I don't know that, but it's likely, if you find Telsalda in the US? But this and the fire engine/bus we've seen here, are all UK-oriented.

Yet we can see them here as a sticker on something brand-marked to a Blue Bird Toys? Do Blue Bird also claim New Maries as a Father too? Or Mother perhaps? No, not that Blue Bird Toys are any more or less likely to be an actual branded factory than Telsalda or any number of other brand-marks, phantom brands or flags-of-convenience!

 

Airfix piracy, an almost full set, with the possibly missing figures as speculative text? You also get five balls, might there have been ten? And who policed them, did the shopkeeper have a big sign saying something like "Balls behind the counter, only for purchases of five or more figures"?

 

These are neither the marked ones in pastel colours we've seen before here, nor the ones from the Mike Orchard Enterprises board game, but a third type altogether, and like an idiot I didn't compare with either, so we'll have to return to them another day. I'd say, quality wise, they are between the other Hong Kong and the Mike Orchard?

 

From both sides, Blue Bird footballers, being jobbed by Telsalda, no New Maries involved. Stop makin' it up, guys! You'll always be found out. That's three posts today, all basically correcting other people's rubbish or dispelling myths, it gets boring.

New Maries are best known for Blue Box knock-off farm and zoo, with the odd Noah's ark set and a range of swoppet Wild West they may have bought in, themselves. Telsalda put their name on Jimson stuff, Guiterman stuff, Blue Bird stuff, Ri Toys stuff, and maybe New Maries stuff, but that's the only connection, and you need to provide evidence, not just tell the whole hobby they are Father and Son! There's no real connection.

E is for Ellem, or Not, as the Case May Be!

Having dealt with Merehall, and added suitable notes to the two older posts with them, I thought I should address Ellem, as they've just have one of their Tag's removed, but it will probably need to be restored when I re-read the articles fully and work out what I posted back then - with all the caveats and questions marks they needed!

 

Ellem were a 'mark' which appeared in the late Sharna-owned Cherilea catalogues, and were an attempt to cut costs by importing cheap product from Hong Kong, rather than relying on the expensive stuff made here, in the midst of, or possibly as a result of, all that industrial dispute/labour turmoil of the period.

This is a box of Ellem Crusaders, with three non-Ellem knights on top, off to the right-hand side, and also courtesy of John Begg (see previous post) but photographed a year earlier.

The Crusaders seem to be the same product as carried by Star Toys, so Ellem may well be a phantom-brand construct of Sharna/Cherilea, while the other two (one very mucked-about with) have the deep-hollow bases of the 'French-looking' paratroopers we saw here.

 

On the other hand, the sky-blue one is another type/maker again, having little circular indents round the locating pegs, and much-thicker walls, to an also hollowed-out base.

This is from an old photoshoot from years ago (2013) and proves little, as the angle is wrong to compare bases, but we will be returning to these from time to time, not least when further attributions turn-up! In the meantime they are just four more, probably from two (or three?) sources, with the Crusader being possibly Star and/or Ellem.

My sample of knock-off shields, the trouble with these is that they are peg-together rather than the heat-welded over-moulding of Timpo's, and consequently can be mucked-about with, by the human owners, within or between makers, to produce colour combinations which never left any of the factories, therefore I offer it only as a sample. Note: some of them are so poorly made, the symbol extends beyond the extent of the shield-board.

 

It's funny, someone used this image (seen before here at Small Scale World) without permission the other day and when I suggested he might be so quick as to enter my grave, he just laughed? You catch someone, in public, ripping you off, and they just don't care, they have no conscience in the matter?

 

Understand this; the more I'm plagiarised, the more I'm followed-up on, the more 'eemies' I have, the better the job I'm doing here, and my stats prove that, because they're all here, reading this, every day - the farty, envious, insecure, thieving, copycat, little scrotes!

 

Someone else in Hong Kong (or one of the above known or unknown makers) produced these copies, also of Timpo, but the earlier 'solids', imported (with poor-quality 'swoppet' foot figures) into the states by Ideal in large playsets, they were the same counter-top box singles here I think, or some bottle-bag rack-toy types? And someone reminded us it was Ideal the other day, but the post seems to have been taken down, so I can't find his name to credit him!

 

Back to Ellem, and some rather Blue Box-looking, Britains-copy, animal solids, in the zoo set, but I suspect 2nd or 3rd generation piracies, and shown here purely to help you sort them out of larger samples of similar animals, I know I have a dozen or so Ostriches now, all 'unknown'!

M is for Merehall's Military Mutineers

It's always nice to help the hobby with a solid attribution of figures which have until now, remained question marks, and with a lot of nonsense said, and confusion sewn about mostly crappy generics of the half-rubberised verity in recent years, it's particularly satisfying to tie-down some of the better, more 'collectable' versions.

Merehall (MH), known to me for a rather fine military hovercraft, and attributed to trucks and vans of the cheapie-shelf variety, are behind these reasonable copies of Timpo ACW, who are easy to ID with their heavy hollowed-out bases and the two pronounced ring-collars to the foot-plug receiving holes.

 

They also copied the Wild West, 'Armymen', Crusaders and generic knights too, and are marked with a neat HONG HONG, the one over the other, between the two locating holes. I can only make out three or four poses, but assume the box had eight-each of six, or six-each of eight for the reported 48 pieces.

Unethical dealers use these to flog old Timpo figures, as the flag can pass for Timpo (it's more equilateral than the Timpo standard yellow, but aping the 7th Cavalry flag) and the hats are very useful!

 

The all important empirical evidence! Many thanks to John Begg, who was sitting on the solution, for letting me shoot this back in the summer. The other identifier is that these are one of the piracy-types with the seperate plug-on boots. And what looks to be a nice date of 1971 (31st June, corrected from 32nd!?).

J is for Just Right For Your Pocket!

Have you ever got so tired, yet wired you couldn't even snooze, yeah, well that's me right now, I was doing online training all day, with tests, and my eyelids are hurtin' heavy, but I'm sort of powering through! So, in the hope this will tip me over, sleep wise, here's a quickie before midnight!

This was once full, but pretty-much everyone who wanted one has had one, and there were four left, while the box had sort of had my name on it for a decade prior, so it finally came home with me, back-end of 2021!

 

The Trojan 'common' set of Tiny Trojans, and because I'd shot it a couple of years earlier, I think was the reason for never quite Blogging the whole show-report! Anyways, here's a close-up, to get them in the Tags again.

Three ex-Crescent sculpts and a man appaently firing wiff-waff balls from a double-barelled . . . thingy! That twin-barrelled PIAT-M/G really does look like that!

U is for Update - Scarabs

This is not me throwing-up a spurious post to get closer to the target total, I've four days to get up 7 posts, which is quite doable, and I've been promising myself bed for the last two hours!

 

But rather, I added an image to the Scammell post later yesterday, then about an hour or so ago, I found the old Merit box scans, so added them, and I've just added another Peco image, so if you are a fan of that particular mechanical horse, it's about four posts down the page, with double the images originally published.

Or here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/12/s-is-for-scammells-scarabs-scammell.html

F is for Follow-up - Deep Sea Divers

Mine wasn't Tresco, although looking through past posts on the Divers - Deep Tag, I do have one, however, by then I'd shot the ones I have here, and Brian had sent me a bunch of shots of his, so I raided the Divers & Submarines folder for a few carded sets off of that evilBay, and we have a quick post!

Two Tresco's from Brian Berke, old and new, with the Tobar one, still on the card, and which I know you could also find in Hawkin's Bazaar, as I saw it before I was collecting all scales, so at least 15-odd-years ago?

 

What seems to set them apart as two groups, whether copies or originals, Tresco versus Hong Kong, is that those from or after Tresco have a small 'pouch' like a binoculars case, on the chest, while the Hong Kong lifts have a longer, thinner case-like object you might find spare machine-gun-barrels in!

 

In the centre is what must be Tresco's last production, in bright yellow, while to either side are the ones with the tubelike piece of equipment marked-up to Imperial and Kingsway, a quick check-back to Brian's image, and you'll see all three are the same Tresco design, with the packet/parcel.

 

While all three of the ones I have here are the tube-design, which I'm calling Hong Kong, to which I added the giant 5" one we saw a while back, so you could see how giant he is! From the apparent age of the paler two, I suspect they may be earlier and the origin of the tube-design, changed from the parcel of the Tresco they were aping?

 

I should have shot that fish-tank one from Chris again too, but . . . next time! Divers are a bit of a favourite here, and we do return to them regularly! Brain also sent three individual shots, but as we've seen the subjects before, and they are in the above line-up, I put them in the folder to replace the three carded ones, against another of those re-visits!

 

There are some very interesting things in that folder, but I need to find more in context to Blog them with, and I have a feeling there's some on the old 'unknown' dongle? So we may return to divers sooner rather than later?

F is for the Flintstone's Flyer!

I could have spent the last couple of hours chucking a few posts up here to blow the record, but I'm going to that anyway before the month is out (I think this post equals the record?), but I was sent a bunch of card buses earlier and said I'd go through P-Z looking for the last of mine, which I've just done, only, one of them wasn't a bus, by any stretch of the imagination!

Somebody called Cleo (the printers?) for a Thornycroft of Gerrards Cross (not the HGV manufacturer!), for a chocolate egg! Well, Cream Eggs and Cadbury's Mini-Eggs will be in the shops by next Tuesday, you know it and I know it!

 

Scale is all over the place, but realism doesn't have to come first when you have prehistoric men using dinosaurs as earthmovers! Also, the artwork on the three sides doesn't tie-in, as it has on the buses, so just a bit of fun!

O is for Oh, Go On Then . . . Have Some Merry Festive Disney!

A few Disney bits which aren't going to make stand-alone posts, or which have escaped previous posts or might have been seen already!

 

From the cannibalised show report from November 2021, I picked this little lot up for a tenner at the last Sandown Park show of that year, which, at less than 75p each, is a bargain, but intrinsically no more than such little pieces of plastic should ever be? Marx Disneykins, most from the general set, but a couple from the 101 Dalmatians set.

 

I shot this on a dealer's stall ages ago, he has a man who 'does' for him, mending lead, antimony or whitemetal parts and breakages, and occasionally he plays with the stuff in the bits bin, and this was the result of one such play!

 

Minutes after I took the shot someone jogged the table and the figure fell, with the head coming-off, so it's now with me, awaiting the magic of superglue, because mending lead is a skilled operation I wouldn't even attempt, slightly too much heat applied to the original piece, and it turns to liquid! Micky says;

"Be nice to the poor in 2024, or I'll re-slot yer' arse wi'me arrows, init!"

Somehow this escaped several posts and follow-ups on the Marx/Wilton cake decorations and similar 'toy town' figures, these are the two sizes of the Babes in Toyland guards, and are both by Marx.

And did we settle this a while ago? This is the commercial version of the pre-production stuff which turned-up in the Dave Pomeroy archive, as depicted on the Minimodels shop-stock boxes. Being Shere Khan from the Jungle Book.

S is for Scammells, Scarabs, Scammell Arabs and Mechanical Horses!

Mentioned in a comment by Jon a few days ago, I had half these in the queue, and quickly took a couple of scans to complete the post! The Mechanical Horse from Scammell, introduced in 1934, was a tree-wheeled lorry (truck) designed for 'short-haul' delivery around a station's goods depot, within the usually adjacent industrial estate, or the wider town, with narrow ways and limited movement a priority, or for moving goods around the busy yard of one of those industrial premises.

 

The 1948 upgrade was known as a Scammell Arab (the best [mechanical] horse!), quickly shortened to Scarab (because it looks more like a beetle that an Arab stallion?!!), which in turn became shorthand for all version of the three-wheelers!

This was the best version for many years, a ready-made model, with flatbed trailer and load - an early model of shipping container, from Merit (J&L Randall), this was actually in one of the older show-report posts, which, as it's all back in 2021 now and beyond relevant as an 'H is for...' type post, I will cannibalise to get a few posts out of it, for the targets!

 

The four main components, Merit also offered most other combinations, with three seperate kits of the lorry, trailer and container, or similar ready-made combinations. Although I think the kits were in the same oxide-red plastic?

 

This colour-scheme is known as Blood and Custard, and represents the British Rail road transport fleet of my early childhood before the all-yellow's of Red Star, NCL and suchlike, and you can see how having such a curved 'prow' meant the vehicles could enjoy tighter turning circles.

 

Langley, who we looked at earlier today, do both the Mechanical Horse (top right) and the Scarab, bottom left, with at least three configurations currently on their website, and various compatible trailers.

 

Airfix offered this for a short while, before dropping it from the catalogues for years, only for it to reappear as a Dapol item, after some Philistines at General Mills, Palitoy or Heller offloaded chunks of the mould bank, where it had mouldered for all those years!

 

Dapol 5th Edition catalogue shot.

 

As Dapol only added it to later catalogues (it's still available), it seems it either needed work, or took a while to find among the other tooling?

This Peco advert' used to be on the back of a lot of model railway magazines and shows Merit accessories with the Peco LK codes, the Scarab is for illustrative purposes, it's not included in the set, and I don't think it was ever offered by Peco with an LK code? I think the missing word is 'essential'?

 

I then found three scans of the box in the 'everything Merit' folder down the bottom of Picasa, where they've been sitting patiently since November 2021!

 

And in another Peco advert as a Merit-coded model.

L is for Langly Models

Just box-ticking a firm which isn't in the Tag-list much, as part of the model railway figure season, and because I'm chasing targets! A bunch of scans I did the other day of older stuff from this whitemetal producer, I have no idea how much of this stuff is still in production, but old moulds do wear-out, while a quick perusal of the website reveals some nice guards-band figures.

 

Langley are still going, and their website is to be found here;

https://www.langleymodels.co.uk/awd1/index.php?route=common/home

 

Where there is a nice potted-history of the company, formed in 1968.